Waldman Says Anti-jewish Outbreaks in Roumania Wouldn’t Have Occurred if Government Had Suppressed S

The press reports on the anti-Jewish disturbances in Roumania have not been exaggerated or distorted, declared Morris Waldman, secretary of the American Jewish Committee, in an interview here with the Jewish Telegraphic Agency, on his arrival from Roumania where he made a first hand investigation into the Jewish situation.

Mr. Waldman said he was convinced that the anti-Jewish outbreaks “which seriously impair Roumania’s prestige and credit, would not have occurred had it not been for the government’s support of the students’ organizations and the so-called patriotic congresses and the government’s reluctance to suppress illegal anti-Semitic propaganda out of a mistaken emphasis upon liberty of the press and assembly”.

Pointing out that the attacks on the Jews are unquestionably instigated by anti-Semitic agitators who found the peasantry, though normally friendly to their Jewish neighbors, fertile soil for their propaganda because of the agrarian depression, Mr. Waldman charged that the ministry of the interior, which controls the police, and the ministry of cults and education which controls the students, teachers and priests, were especially responsible.

Mr. Waldman stated that King Carol is greatly distressed by the recent events and that the government’s latest measures which have restored order indicate the the government has finally realized that the numerous anti-Jewish manifestations during the past year, which it professed to regard as sporadic and trifling and harmless, were rapidly generating wide-spread anarchy.

He cited Borscha as a “tragic testimony of the danger of propaganda of hate among the normally kindly disposed peasantry who terrorized the entire Jewish population of Bukowina, Transylvania and Bessarabia for months”. Despite the local government officials first report that the Borscha fire was an accident. Mr. Waldman fo##d overwhelming evidence proving that it was carefully planned incendiarism.

Though four weeks have elapsed since the fire, no relief has been afforded the Borscha Jews except $2,500 originally granted by the government and a few hundred dollars raised by the Transylvanian Jewish emergency committee, Mr. Waldman said, and this in the face of the fact that damage totalling $300,000 resulted and trade and industry were suspended.

No steps have been taken to provide shelter for the homeless Jews or to rebuild the burnt area, Mr. Waldman charged. “Hundreds are virtually starving and many are living in cellars of the ruined houses under conditions beggaring description”, he continued. “Unless steps are taken immediately I fear that pestilence will not only affect the Jewish as well as the Christian population of Borscha but it will spread elsewhere”. The situation warrants the imperative action of the Roumanian government and the Red Cross, Mr. Waldman concluded.